Hyperliquid is taking crypto perps deep into DeFi’s ‘money LEGO’ land

Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange specializing in perpetual futures ("perps"), blockchain derivatives that allow for leveraged trading without expiration dates. Founded by Jeff Yan and a pseudonymous developer known as iliensinc, Hyperliquid launched at the start of 2023 and quickly became popular due to its liquidity and deep order book. The platform’s design enables composability, a concept from decentralized finance (DeFi) where modular smart contracts can be combined like “money LEGOs” to build new financial products. Hyperliquid’s Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM blockchain connects to its fast native HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications, such as wallets and exchanges, to leverage its shared liquidity to offer perps trading and related services.

Several prominent developers, including MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and South African exchange VALR, have integrated with Hyperliquid using its “builder codes” system. This composability increases liquidity, asset variety, and network effects on the platform. Builders have generated around $90 million in revenue so far, as reported by Flowscan. Hansu Jian, CEO of Hyperion DeFi—which is focused on Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE—describes the platform as “more like the AWS for finance,” emphasizing Hyperliquid’s role as foundational infrastructure providing liquidity and market efficiency while allowing integrators to own their user interfaces and charge fees on trading volume.

MetaMask, with over 100 million users globally, has leveraged Hyperliquid’s infrastructure to offer self-custodial perps trading directly within its wallet since October 2025. According to MetaMask’s product manager Matthieu Saint Olive, Hyperliquid's strong order matching capabilities enable high liquidity and execution quality. MetaMask sees growing interest beyond cryptocurrencies, with commodities and equities now making up roughly a quarter of its perp volumes. MetaMask charges a transparent flat 0.1% builder fee to users, with no hidden costs.

South African crypto exchange VALR also partnered with Hyperliquid for perpetual futures due to liquidity challenges on its own infrastructure. CEO Farzam Ehsani explained that although VALR built its own trading infrastructure, it struggled to attract volume for perps, prompting the decision to integrate with Hyperliquid’s order book to tap into its global liquidity pool without compromising on trade transparency.

The article suggests that as major platforms like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange expand into perps, there will be cross-venue arbitrage opportunities. Hansu Jian notes that strong retail participation, or “non-toxic flow,” could create organic mechanisms for funding rates, indicating potential synergy between centralized and decentralized perp markets in the future.